Lucas laughs.
Levi falters, his body coiling, the sudden movement drawing Lucas toward safety. “You have years of unimaginable torture ahead of you, and you laugh?” the archdemon asks angrily.
For one brief moment, I feel pity for Levi. Because, as ridiculous as his anger seems over a little laughter, I understand where it comes from. I harbor the same hatred for Levi and Gillian after what they did to my parents. After what they did to me. After what they did to innocent lives.
Lucas laughs again. “You will never win, Levi. Not when there are towns like Havenwood Falls. Not when there are creatures, gods, and monsters who want to coexist together peacefully.”
Levi throws him against the snow, wraps his hands around Lucas’s neck, bares his fangs, and strikes.
I don’t have time to get to him. No one has time to get to him. Everything happens way too fast.
One moment, Levi’s fangs are buried in Lucas’s neck. The next, the archdemon is coiled up in the snow, struggling to breathe, his face as badly burned as Lucas’s body.
It’s the holy water, I think, astounded. That’s why Lucas drank it.
Lucas tries to stand and falls. He’s way too close to the portal.
I scramble through the snow, searching frantically for the one thing I know will help.
Levi rises, his anger even more palpable than it was before. He lunges.
A blur stops him, and I freeze. In the snow, a figure stands between Lucas and the archdemon determined to imprison him. This figure isn’t human, although he looks it. Broad and burly, he is every inch the quintessential mountain man, his face covered in a dark, wiry beard.
I know this man. It’s the man I saw the day I went to Jeanine Turner’s real estate office. The same man who had been watching me outside Coffee Haven.
“I ought to have known you’d be the reason for all of this fuss in the mountains,” the man says, glancing back at Lucas.
I continue my search in the snow.
When my hands close over the athame, I clutch it to me and scurry to the spot where the shadowy creatures I summoned hold down a weakened Gillian.
Standing over her, I lift the dagger.
“Don’t,” Lucas calls out. His voice is weak, his gaze locking with mine.
Levi uses the moment of distraction to plow through the stranger, knocking him aside before taking Lucas and shoving him into the Infernum.
Anger and grief overwhelm me.
I’m not fast enough to save him, but the stranger is.
The mountain man moves too quickly to be anything other than supernatural. With a roar, he reaches in and catches Lucas by the hand, his muscles bulging.
“I’m not strong enough to keep you for long, you old bastard,” the man growls. “You’d better do this fast or you’re going to be leaving that archdemon in this town, and I can’t have that.”
Lucas wastes no time. A bright light flashes, glaring and then receding to reveal Lucas and the other man sprawled out in the snow.
“God, I hate you,” Lucas says, only it’s not Lucas speaking. It’s his body, but not his voice. “Do this fast, Seraph.”
The mountain man’s body rises, and I know by the way he moves that Lucas is inhabiting it. “You’ve been working out, Elias,” the mountain man teases in Lucas’s voice.
“Close the portal,” Desi tells me.
Resuming my position over Gillian, I stand, the athame poised to strike, my hands shaking. The demoness stares up at me, her gaze wide and unflinching.
“Tell me how to close it,” I command.
She glares. “You know how to close it, but I don’t think you have the guts to do it.”
Gillian is everything I could possibly hate in a demon, but she’s right. Protecting myself and outright killing her are two entirely different things.
Blood and energy. She used my blood and my energy to open it.
With a cry, I bring the athame down. The blade slashes my stomach, and I watch as the blood drips to the snow below. Falling to my knees beside the demoness, I begin to write in the white powder, letting power run through my veins, spirits whispering in my head.
The portal begins to close.
A shriek shatters the stillness.
In the night, his broad frame standing over the serpent, the mountain man drives Lucas’s flaming sword into Leviathan’s heart. The gurgling sound of blood fills the air.
For a long moment, no one moves.
Placing his foot against the archdemon, the man pulls the blade free from Levi’s chest, lifts the sword, and slices off the demon’s head. Even in the darkness, no one misses the smile on the bearded man’s face.
The portal vanishes.
An eerie relieved silence falls over the mountain. Wolves meld into the trees. Saundra nods at the mountain man, glances at me, and then motions at someone in the shadows. Men and women, some of them familiar, hurry onto the ridge. They don’t speak when they approach me, their hard eyes on the demoness next to me on the ground.
Running my fingers through the snow, I watch as the shadows vanish. The men and women grab Gillian.
“The Court will take care of her,” Saundra tells me from where she stands near the trees. Roman, Ronya, and Addie nod at me. My whole life I’ve known these people, but I’ve never seen them in this capacity. As warriors ready to fight if the need arose. Warriors ready to take down an archdemon if Lucas had failed. Warriors willing to die for the town they reside over.
The group sent by Saundra, a petulant but restrained Gillan between them, ducks into the forest. The demoness had been eerily silent near the end, and I wonder if she wishes I had killed her.
Death is too good for some people.
A bright light flashes, and I cover my eyes. When they open again, Lucas struggles to stand, his wings gone, their flaming beauty hidden away wherever wings hide.
The mountain man offers him a hand.
“Thank you, Elias,” Lucas says, and I know by the sound of his voice, he’s back in his own body.
“How did you do that?” I ask.
The men look at me.
Elias smirks, claps Lucas on the shoulder, and shakes his head. “As the highest order, your boy here can take over the body of any lower caste angel. He was quite the asshole about it years ago.”
“I was a misguided youth,” Lucas says.
“You’re an angel?” I ask Elias.
“A Divine,” he replies.
Outside Coffee Haven isn’t the first time I’ve seen Elias around town, although I can’t quite place where else we’ve run into each other. I’ve kept to myself too much over the years.
Lucas stumbles, and Elias steadies him.
“The both of you could use healing,” Elias points out, his gaze falling to my stomach. It’s probably a good thing he can’t see my back. His eyes slide up, the bright blue depths softening when they fall on my face. “You did well.”
I replace Elias at Lucas’s side, my eyes holding the mountain man’s gaze. “Thank you.”
Pulling Lucas’s arm over my shoulders, I wince when it slides across the sensitive skin of my back.